


how ribs can capture air

by Iambic



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Discussion of Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 01:55:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3918511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iambic/pseuds/Iambic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian fears himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	how ribs can capture air

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tofsla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofsla/gifts).



> as I summarised it to Toft, whose prompts led to this thing (whatever it is): here is a short treatise on a small cross-section of the things Dorian is afraid of.

The Bull does not fear the Fade specifically. Perhaps it would be easier for him, if he did, but Dorian lacks the power to pry it from his mind, and even if he had it – boundaries. Lines set, but not for crossing. Even with the Bull’s cock in his mouth, or being pressed back and fucked hard enough to burn the curtains, Dorian doesn’t ask for everything, because he will not ask for what he cannot yet give in return. So he can’t verify the Bull’s fears, only trust in what he’s allowed to see.

But he thinks, Dorian does, he thinks he knows some of what he isn’t intended to.

The Bull does not fear the Fade on its own. Oh, it would never be comfortable, not as it has been for Dorian, but the Bull has led a life that allows him to differentiate between danger and companionship, and he is beginning now to teach it to Dorian. He knows danger, and he knows _threat_ , and he knows where they coincide and where they do not.

It lay in the first words he’d spoken in the Fade, that Dorian has never bothered to forget. _If they get to me – here’s how to take me down_. In that pale light, tinged with green, the shadows of his face laid bare, Dorian had seen it. In tenseness of his shoulders, his back, Dorian could feel it. Their fears, in the end, were not so far apart.

The Bull fears himself.

\--

Sometimes even now, even a year later, it catches up to him. Not even in nightmare – he’ll see spectres in the flames of some campfire in the hissing wastes, where the shadows in the dunes could contain demons far more sinister than the smoke of dry wood might hold. But the demon that the Bull sees is lit up by the fire, visible only in the light. And Dorian sits there with him long after anyone else stays up but the lean dark scout who watches those shadows that she can see.

He doesn’t know why he does this, except that he wants to. He doesn’t know what that says about him. But he does know how the Bull’s rough, warm hand can envelope the entirety of Dorian’s, and that when he leans into the Bull, the Bull presses back against him.

Or they’ll be in the Herald’s Rest, talking and laughing with the Chargers or anyone who cares to join them, and the Bull will stiffen in place. If he’s receptive to words, Dorian will offer to buy him a drink, and if he isn’t, Dorian will take his arm and guide him somewhere darker and more silent. Those nights, the Bull often asks to be held down himself. It’s only sexual some of the time.

\--

_“You can stay, you know. It doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it to.”_

_But it does have to mean something, Dorian thinks; he already wants it anyway._

\--

Dorian fears himself.

There’s the earthly temptations of course, some that he responds to – sex, food, and a plethora of vices he’d rather kept solely in the past – and the deeper fears of the mind. The fear of ruining all he touches. The fear of the things he has ruined already. The temptation to flaunt the parts of himself that don’t add up to a good man. The temptation of reaching out through his terror to take the Bull’s hand for no one’s sake but his own. It’s safe if it has a purpose. It’s safe if it only hurts Dorian.

And he fears the rush of power that raises the dead around him as puppets, for in those moments, with that power, he doesn’t fear anything at all.

That’s what they teach in the Circles, even in Tevinter. The restraint, the focus, the ability to hold the intention of the task he’s summoning this power for clear in his head. He’s always held it back, kept it wrestled down. But it is always there.

And now there are things worth saving from a fire.

\--

Corypheus marches south to the arbor wilds, where winter somehow fails to touch, and the Inquisition follows. Their own march proceeds swiftly as a swollen army with large machines of war may, but there’s too much time to think while walking. Dorian cannot forgive himself for the way he keeps close to the Bull’s side, or the defiance with which he meets Cassandra’s inscrutable gaze, or the way their Inquisitor smiles benevolently upon them as if to bless them, as if they exist within a unit, as if–

The fear clenches around his chest, and he thinks of sunken eyes and the bone-deep need to push further, sacrifice more to close a hand around the knowledge just out of reach. Of boundaries, and how he has never been particularly good at staying on his allotted side of a line drawn in the sand. When does the sacrifice cease to be solely his own?

Dorian looks to the Bull, who is looking right back, and ice shoots up his spine. The Bull’s face, open and honest and _kind_ , and directed at Dorian, who has long lost the ability to affect only himself. Dorian fears, because he knows that he’s crossed that line, too, and the sacrifices he continues to make will harm them both.

Temptation: Dorian will continue his practice of self-sacrifice. He will also continue his practice of winding up in the Bull’s bed, now more nights than not.

That night, in the tent they have given up all pretenses of not sharing, the Bull doesn’t ask why Dorian presses his face out of sight, just strokes his hair, curls a heavy arm around for the illusion of loss of control. The army creaks and murmurs around them, and Dorian tries very hard not to cry. It’s nothing, no great hurt or deep sadness. Just this aching of a fear weathered too long, of wanting to give up his boundaries or at least let someone cross them. Wanting comfort, wanting restraints, but paralysed by the prospect of asking. He presses his face against the Bull’s chest, and loses his war.

“It’s all right,” the Bull tells him, and he overwhelms Dorian in too many conflicting ways. “Let it out. It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Dorian whispers, and the Bull keeps stroking his hair.

Dorian cannot sleep, so the Bull does not either. The fatigue pulling at the edges of Dorian’s eyes speaks to the late hour – but it could also be a lasting side effect of crying. In the moment he’s tiny and helpless and terrified of power given back to him, and when the dawn comes he will have to take it anyway. Still helpless, but armed.

“You told us once how to kill you, if you were to become possessed,” Dorian says, in the same vein of helplessness, dragged along by horrified curiosity, hands curling against the Bull’s chest but lacking something to close around. “I was afraid then. Not of the danger. Not of you.”

The Bull tightens his hold. He kisses the crown of Dorian’s hair. This night could have been different if Dorian could have sat down on his terror and blamed his insomnia on restlessness. If he’d asked the Bull to fuck him exhausted, so he didn’t have to think about anything, least of all himself.

“I was afraid of having to, and succeeding.”

Temptation: faced by a demon wearing the Bull’s face, would he be able to deal the finishing blow?

This is cruel, what Dorian would ask, and he will ask it anyway because he lost the ability for kindness somewhere around the time he started crying. Their tent is dark. He shouldn’t be able to see. But Dorian does, he sees the Bull’s face all lit up in sickly light, every hollow uncovered. He sees the crackling lines of another future, and the pull that responded in his every nerve. The promise of power. He’d yearned for it then like he yearns for it now, and fears it all the more.

Dorian says, “And now I’m going to ask you for the same favor.”

There’s no argument, because the Bull understands, and it hurts anyway. Dorian has to lower his face again, to get the words out. “I’ve spent too much time trying to figure Corypheus out to avoid the realization that I’ll be facing a mirror down in the wilds. The pariah, hungry for respect, hungry for power.” Though no one will see it, least of all the Bull, Dorian smiles, or grimaces, or both. “I was well on my way in that direction. I may return to it. And should this come to pass…”

“It won’t,” the Bull interjects, in the same fierce voice he’d told Dorian, on another bedroll in another camp, _you’re a good man_. “You’re better than that.”

“I wasn’t,” says Dorian. “I’m not being hard on myself in this instance.”

The Bull’s hand drags down Dorian’s back, shoulderblades to the base of the spine and back again. “You are now,” says the Bull, and Dorian wants to cry in frustration now because strength of character doesn’t have anything to do with strength of will.

Dorian doesn’t have the strength to take back his words. “Promise me,” he says, and he even looks back up to the Bull’s face, still visible by the firelight shining through the tent. “Please,” he says.

In the dark, in their shared tent, the Bull bends to kiss him. “I promise,” he replies.

\--

The Bull fears Dorian, now.

Or – that’s uncharitable. He fears what Dorian asked of him. He fears having to succeed.

Dorian is just afraid.


End file.
